How to build an IB revision plan that survives week three

I've made two big revision plans that I can still look at. One is mine, from the spring of my IB final year. The other is for a student retaking IB Biology, Maths and Psychology in 2026. Both are databases in Notion, and both started strong and fell apart in the same place: around week three.

So this guide is two things: the structure that works, and what to do about week three.

The structure: one row per task, not a calendar

Most students plan in a calendar or on a sheet of paper. I plan in a table where every row is one study task:

Three things make this work better than a calendar:

1. The syllabus code is the key. Every task points at a specific sub-topic from the subject guide, not "do some Bio". You always know what's done and what's missing.
2. The type of studying is explicit. Past paper, question bank, worksheet, new notes, video, flashcards. If a whole week is "new notes" and nothing else, you can see that you're not practising.
3. The done box is honest. You can't fudge a ticked box. That's what shows you, early, when the plan is slipping.

Rotate subjects by weekday

Instead of "Biology week" or a random mix, give each subject fixed days. The rotation I used with the retake student:

• Monday and Wednesday: Maths. Three consecutive sub-topics per day, in syllabus order.
• Tuesday and Friday: Biology. Two or three sub-topics per day, deliberately mixed across the four themes (A, B, C, D) instead of in order.
• Thursday and Saturday: Psychology. One or two learning outcomes per day.
• Sunday: off, or catch-up only.

Fixed days remove the daily decision of "what should I do today?", which is where a lot of time gets lost. Mixing Biology themes within a week also means you're constantly pulling up material from different parts of the course, which is closer to how Paper 1B and Paper 2 test you.

Maths: easy, medium, hard

For Maths I used a difficulty ladder on consecutive days: "Topic 3 easy" one day, "Topic 3 medium" the next, "Topic 3 hard" after that. Then I came back to the hard level of the earlier topics at the end. Going straight to hard problems on a topic you're shaky on mostly produces frustration. The ladder builds the method first.

Match the activity to the subject

From my own plans, roughly:

• Maths: worksheets and worked videos, then exam questions.
• Biology and Chemistry: question bank and past-paper questions first, notes second. Use your notes to fix what the questions exposed.
• Psychology: notes per learning outcome, then short-answer and essay outlines. (That's the old Psychology course, which my retake student sat in 2026 and which has its final exams in November 2026. On the course examined from May 2027 there are no learning outcomes to tick off: organise your notes by approach, concept and context instead.)
• Every subject, every day: 15–20 minutes of flashcards (my Anki setup).

The last week before the exams should be past papers, timed, and nothing else. If you're not sure where to get them legally, see where to find IB past papers.

A realistic day

My final-year template was two four-hour blocks plus an optional evening block:

• Block 1: 09:00–13:00
• Lunch: a real break, 90 minutes
• Block 2: 14:30–18:30
• Optional block 3: 20:00–22:00

That's for holidays and study leave. During term, one or two focused blocks after school are enough if they happen every day. Consistency beats long days.

Why plans die in week three, and how to keep yours alive

In both of my plans, the done boxes were ticked steadily for the first two to three weeks and then mostly stayed empty. My daily log even has a "back on track" entry on day nine, followed by nothing. Here's what I've learned since:

• Week three is when motivation from starting runs out and the results aren't visible yet. Improvement lags behind the work by weeks. Expect it.
• Keep a one-line daily check-in. Date, planned blocks, done blocks, one sentence. If two days in a row show 0 of 3, that's your signal. Not the mock result three weeks later.
• Plan a lighter week three. Fewer new topics, more review. A plan you can keep beats a perfect plan you abandon.
• When you fall behind, don't reschedule everything. Drop the lowest-value tasks (usually rewriting notes) and keep the questions and the flashcards.
• Tell someone. A study partner, a tutor or a parent who asks "did you do your blocks today?" is the strongest fix I know. Both times my plans worked best, someone was checking in.

Get the template

I've turned this into a free Notion template with the task database, the weekday rotation, the activity types and the daily check-in already set up. You can duplicate it into your own Notion: see free IB Notion templates.